Author: Elisa Spain

Stay The Course…

October 13, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Stay the course….

How often have we heard this phrase, and at same time, how often do we react to what is happening in the moment and as a result lose sight of where we were heading?

Most of us want to be flexible and responsive to our constituencies be they employees, customers, shareholders, family or friends. And when we set a new direction or introduce a new idea, the reality is, we are often met with resistance. Change is hard and most of us resist change. When met with resistance, it is tempting to retrench.

In my experience, when I resist this temptation and stay the course, I have been rewarded.

Just recently, a speaker was presenting a new concept. Some folks in the room were able to see the relevance to their business, but a few were not. The ones that could not spoke up and what the speaker heard was “my content isn’t relevant, I need to move in a different direction”. And when he and I spoke during the break, we agreed instead to stay the course. In the end, we were glad we did. In talking with the members afterwards, the vocal ones explained, “I just wasn’t getting it. All I wanted was help in making it relevant”. The others said they found great value in what they heard.

And, then Diana Nyad, gave us the best reminder of all. She had a goal, she stayed the course, despite folks telling her, “it couldn’t be done” and she was too old. And, after several attempts, tweaks along the way, she did it!

Huge leadership lesson here for me: When the vocal minority speaks up, listen, evaluate, help them understand the mission and then stay the course. The flip side, is not to listen when they see you are on a collision course, and that is a topic for another blog.

Trust Your Gut For The No…

October 6, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Often when we are buyers, we find someone or something we like and then work to find data (experience, accomplishments, etc.) to convince ourselves why this person or this product is something we should buy.

When it comes to interviewing for key candidates, Vistage speakers, Barry Deutsch and Brad Remillard, recommend we take a more structured approach to interviewing to improve our hiring success. They recommend we start the process first by clearly defining the success factors for the role and then asking the candidate to tell us stories about how they have achieved this success in the past and how they will do it for us.

It dawned on me recently that this approach works in many (most?) situations when we are buyers. After all, when we are hiring, we are buyers.

So, am I saying no gut at all? All data? No. Absolutely, there is a gut to every decision we make, and in most situations, especially when we are buyers, trust your gut for the no. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. When hiring, it’s the behavioral questions that help us learn if a person is a cultural fit. If a person’s style, ethics or values don’t fit, it doesn’t matter if they can do the job.

When committing our time or buying a product, isn’t it really the same key question?

What are my expectations (success factors)?
What is the data that supports that my expectations will be met?
Then the gut question: How does this feel?

Leadership Quote: Create Goals, Not For What You'll Achieve…

September 29, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

“Create goals, not for what you’ll achieve, but for who you get to be in the process.”

Occasionally, I hear from people who say, “I don’t have goals and frankly, I don’t see the point”. While setting achievement goals is somewhat personality driven, the value is there for all of us when we create goals for the purpose of….well, creating a purpose.

Goals, be they personal or business, give us a direction to go in. They help with that ball-dropping prioritization, I talked about a few weeks ago, Drop Some Balls, and they give us clarity each day.

When we begin to think about goal setting as defining who we want to be, suddenly it is less about achieving and more about “who we get to be in the process”.

Go Ahead, Drop Some Balls…

September 15, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Just the other day, I was meeting with an executive acquaintance of mine who had just received a significant promotion. While he is excited about his promotion, he is challenged with looking for his replacement in his previous position; and in the meantime was doing both jobs. When I asked him how it was going, he responded, “just trying to get it all done, without dropping any balls”.

This conversation reminded me of one I had with one of my Vistage CEO Advisory Board members. He was lamenting the challenges one his executives has with burnout. In this case, the CEO was saying “I wish he would learn to drop some balls, his effort to get everything done is what is causing his burnout”!

For those of us who want to dot every I and cross every T, (I admit I am one of them), the ‘to do list’ can seem endless. What I heard this wise CEO saying is, “go ahead, drop some balls”, just choose the ones you are going to drop.

What if instead of starting each day with a list of what we are going to do, we instead begin by removing from the list the things we aren’t going to do. Here are some examples to get you started:

What if you reviewed email once or twice per day, and let everyone know that is your plan?
What if you coded your email so that critical emails moved to a priority list and you responded to these first?
What if you paused and asked yourself, does this email, call, text, inquiry require a response?
What if you removed yourself from EVERY email where you were listed as a cc (or sorted these to a “someday maybe” list).
What if you paused, before saying “yes”?

Please send me your comments with ideas to add to this list…

P.S. In honor of this post and my upcoming vacation, the next blog post will appear September 29th.

When Making The Counter-Intuitive Choice…

September 8, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

I have often heard our Vistage economists, Brian & Alan Beaulieu say, “the time to invest is late recession, early recovery”. And it is one thing to say this in theory, and quite another to actually have the courage to do it. Not unlike the recommendation to buy more equities when the market is down. While we all understand the “buy low, sell high” adage, natural risk aversion causes many of us to do exactly the opposite.

And yet, the Beaulieu’s advice works. As an example, I had the pleasure of watching Baird & Warner, the 2nd largest real estate company in the Chicagoland area. With two of their top executives as members of the Vistage Advisory Boards I lead, I have a close connection to Baird. And while Baird, like everyone else, made tactical cost saving efforts such as closing offices and increasing efficiencies; at the same time, they were also investing in the future, making capital investments and key hires.

The result: as the real estate industry continues to recover, Baird has earned its unfair share of the market. Outperforming the competition on every key indicator, deals written, deals closed, etc.

When I spoke with Steve Baird, his response was “while everyone else is hunkering down – I took the opportunity to double down”.

Here is Steve’s summary of what it takes to build, and sustain (in his case for 5 generations), a world class company. Food for thought as the current economic cycle matures:

investment
reinvention
continuous feedback loop
commitment /stick to your principles
time is an asset
you have to do it for years – not just ride market share up and be really good
not just a great product – need a great business
building world class is not building to sell – be clear
be careful of sacrificing profitability for the sake of more business

Elisa K. Spain

Managing Business Assets W/ Portfolio Management Risk Practices

September 1, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Businesses are assets, right? What might happen if we followed the risk management practices of portfolio management in running them?

The “portfolio managers” of our business are our leadership team, our key executives. Business owners have a risk tolerance that leads them to be more or less involved in activities in their businesses.

What I observe as a Vistage chair and leadership coach is sometimes executives frequently feel either micromanaged or adrift and unclear of expectations.

When the business owners abdicate instead of delegate, only to jump back in when things are not going as they expected (but didn’t verbalize), this creates unnecessary risk; leads to outcomes we don’t want and drives everyone crazy.

What if, instead, owners and executives followed the same process as we do for our investment portfolios?

When we hire an advisor to manage our traditional portfolio of stocks and bonds, the first thing they want to know is the answer to the following two questions:

Will you delegate full responsibility for managing your portfolio to me? or
Will the account be co-advised? Meaning, before I make a purchase or sale in your portfolio, I must consult with you?

When the owner of the portfolio chooses #1, the client and the advisor work together to design a portfolio that meets the risk tolerance of the client, the advisor constructs the portfolio and typically the advisor provides reports, usually monthly or quarterly, that inform the owner of the status of their portfolio. Additionally, the advisor’s reports include a comparison of their performance to that of their peer group.

Sometimes, the owner of the portfolio chooses #1, but instead of delegating authority, monitoring the performance of the portfolio, and periodically evaluating the portfolio manager; the owner abdicates, i.e. moves on to other things and ignores the portfolio manager.

I heard a sad story from a friend recently who chose option #1, neglected the monitor and evaluation part, and didn’t discover the result until he needed the money and realized it was gone. The advisor was not dishonest, he simply made poor investment choices.

If you decide to try this approach, here are some questions you and your executives might consider asking:

What decisions will the executive have full responsibility for?
Which decisions do you want to co-advise?
What risks are you most concerned about?
What kind of reporting works best for you? Written, verbal?
What do you want to monitor, and on what frequency?
How will my performance be evaluated?

And finally the most important question,

What is our agreement as to how to give each other feedback when the outcomes or the process didn’t go as we expected?

Leadership Quote: Vision Without Execution…

August 25, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote:

Vision without execution is hallucination.

— Thomas A. Edison

When leaders focus solely on vision and strategy and not on execution, put simply, nothing gets done. Successful leaders know that a vision is a destination that their team can rally around. They also know that while the vision is their job, it is a team effort to develop a strategy for getting there.

At the same time, once the vision and strategy are defined, results only happen with implementation. And only succeed with the monitoring and evaluation that follows.

In my experience, leaders who see their only job as generating the big ideas and abdicate their leadership role when it comes to execution are suffering from the hallucinations Thomas Edison describes. By avoiding learning about the people they lead, the technologies their companies use, the customers they serve, and numerous other crucial little things, they miss the key elements of execution.

This is why Vistage members share their vision, strategy and execution plans, are accountable to each other for all three and outperform their industry peers.

Given The Opportunity, Create An Experience…

August 18, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Earlier this week, I spent two days with one of Vistage’s top speakers, Tom Searcy. Tom’s workshop is about Hunting Big Sales; What to do to Filter and Win the Big Deals. Filter, as in, know which ones to pursue and then what to do to win.

Our members take turns hosting meetings and the second day Tom joined us, the meeting was hosted by Shane Dittrich, CEO of T&D Metal. In reflecting on the day we spent at Shane’s location in Watseka IL, we were all struck by the experience he created for us. And for me, the connection between creating an experience and winning big deals.

Here’s what I observed.

The entire day was intentional and orchestrated – starting with the night before – where to stay, where to eat, the setup and planning of the meals, the transportation, and the tour. Instead of PowerPoint for a prop, Shane used vans from one of his businesses and gave a plant tour. When it came time to give his presentation, he just stood up in front of us and told us his story. And, he didn’t do it all himself, he delegated to several team members. As a result we were able to feel the culture of T&D.

‘Learnings’ for me from this…

-Intentionality yields results

-Given the opportunity to create an experience, do it

-Use real “props” rather than PowerPoint to tell your story

-Bring in your team in ways that demonstrate your culture

Oops, I Was Thinking Out Loud…

August 11, 2013 by Elisa Spain4 Comments

How often have we said this to ourselves and discovered unintended consequences. As leaders we know that others are always watching what we do and listening and reacting to what we say. And, when we are with the folks in the office, in the factory or in the field, most of us are conscious of what we say and how we show up.

I wonder though, if we have this same awareness as leaders when we are with our leadership team. Or for that matter, when as members of the leadership team we are with our bosses and our colleagues. You may be thinking (silently?) so, are you saying I want to be aware of what I am saying all the time? Yikes!!

My sense is the answer is yes. When we think out loud, sometimes we create expectations, alarm or even actions that we did not intend. Recently, one of my clients shared this story: “I was sitting in my office with my VP of Operations and I was thinking out loud, wondering what we needed to do next to get to the growth goals I have. I was going on and on about my frustrations and concerns. Next day, he came back into my office and asked me if I was planning to sell the company. He apparently had gone home and thought about what I had said all night”.

I find that if I have the presence to simply say, “May I think out loud for a moment?” or “Can I just vent for a moment?”, that frames the conversation. Sometimes this pausing reminds me that it is best to simply ‘zip it’.

What has been your experience?